


Meet Cute

by Thimblerig



Series: Scenes From A War [10]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Dubious Flirting, Gen, Period-Typical Wound Care, Prequel, black humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 09:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16784035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: "Eight years we been in the army together, Constance. I dug a ball out of his thigh once, when we didn't trust the surgeon..."





	Meet Cute

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably warn you that when my beta saw the start of this, her response was, "What in god’s name did i just read?"
> 
> Um, I'm just in a peculiar mood, I guess.

_1622, Île de Ré_

"We'll hold the shooting contest some other time,” says the King's Musketeer, tucked into a pile of straw neat as a hen's egg. “I'd have won, anyway,” he adds dismissively, arrogant in his reclining as the King himself.

“I know.” Porthos grins down at the man - boy, really, for all his pencil-thin moustache. “I laid all my money on meself to lose, through some mates.” He crouches in the straw of the long, low room, leather creaking, and pats the boy on the shoulder, friendly-like. “So put yourself back together soon, kiddo, an’ I'll buy you a proper dinner. Could use some feeding, skinny brat like you.”

The Musketeer - Armand was it? Athanais? - rolls his eyes, fever-bright in a face pale with shock and pearly with sweat. Someone shucked his tunic and breeches off him and he wears only a shirt, the tail of it tucked discreetly over his privates. At the far end of the makeshift infirmary, a wounded soldier begins to sob. “Don't tell me you're watching your figure...”

The Musketeer - _Aramis,_ that's it - shrugs expressively. “You'll have to wait a bit, Infantry.” His eyes, dark and with lashes a pretty lady would kill for, drift down to the wadding of cloth he presses to a wound halfway along his thigh. The red-brown staining of the cloth flushes bright red as the wound starts to bleed again. “The ball's still in there.”

Together they look at the army surgeon working his bleary way down the line of injured men. The man wipes his hands on his blood-stained apron, then takes another swig from a brown clay bottle. He holds out his hand peremptorily, and a thatch-haired orderly hands him a bone-saw, still dirty from the last patient, while the other nurses along a bucket of hot pitch. They meet each other's eyes.

“Do you have steady hands?” Aramis asks.

“Your mother thought so.”

“Papa!” Aramis cries joyfully. Then, “Done this before?”

Porthos shrugs. He knows to clean things, if he can get good water, or brandy if he hasn't already drunk it. Everything’s healed up so far.

“The ball is a problem, it's true. There's an artery running by the wound, a great river of blood...” The Musketeer traces a line down his thigh with one slender finger. “And if you nick the embankments… _Pshhhhhhhhh…”_ He gestures, demonstrating his imminent doom with alarming enthusiasm.

“Steady on!” Porthos says, gripping his shoulder.

“But!” the boy says, eyes bright, “if you don't get all the cloth fibres out of the wound, I'll probably just die of the putrefaction. So don't… fret too much about it.”

There's only a tallow candle nearby, set up in the high hanging lantern, sputtering and stinking of fat. Porthos runs the fine blade of his sock-knife through it three times, anyway - there was an old Jewish doctor hiding out in the Court of Miracles, always told him to do that - and he sets up his bottle of best brandy nearby for cleaning it all out, after.

“You a wriggler?” he asks the Musketeer, lifting his knife.

Aramis meets his eyes seriously. “Better hold me down.”

Porthos whistles sharply and, as a handful of men glance his way, nods one over. The soldier, a young and tender junior cavalry officer who has _no business_ sitting things out in this shit-hole, wanders over. His eyes are dazed, there's a drip of blood trickling out of his nicely brushed hair, and he's holding a fancy handkerchief up to a cut lip, but he'll do. Porthos gestures him down into the hay, back against the wall, with young Aramis leaning against him, and wraps Junior Cavalry's arms around the boy real tight. Aramis tips his head back against Junior's collarbone and, as Porthos grips his knee, muses, "Generally I do this sort of thing in more... charming circumstances."

"That an invitation?" Porthos jokes.

Aramis huffs with laughter. "Depends how steady your hands are, Infantry," he says, grinning like a cheerful devil. "One has _standards."_ Then, softly, “I don't want to die.”

“Hey, hey,” Porthos says softly. “You can trust me.”

Aramis meets his eyes, and nods.

Porthos tightens his grip on the boy's leg, lifts the knife, and -

**Author's Note:**

> It's a terrible idea to try and pull bullets on your own. Put pressure on the wound and get thine arse to a qualified medical professional instead.
> 
> And yes, pre-antibiotics, pre-reliable antisepsis, dirt and cloth fibres caught in a wound were a huge deal.


End file.
